Spring Potholders

I love spring! I try to keep my windows open for as long as possible and look past the all of dust it creates because I get to enjoy it for approximately one week.  The desert likes to mess with my head and pretend it's nice weather here and then instantly turn itself into necessary air conditioning time.

In the meantime... I wanted some new potholders.  Our friends were visiting, so one morning before we headed out for the day I decided it would take my friend and I a 'couple hours' to make some pot holders.   All afternoon later... and some really rushed binding (not so proud of that, but I really wanted to be finished)... I present you the springiest of potholders ever!

I used my left over HST's from the pillows I made the other week and some of my favorite hummingbirds and came up with these.  I love the way the bee's and honeycombs look on the binding.

This is Kona Coal and Azure again.

My friend dug through my stash and came up with these fabrics for hers.  They're so bright and PINK!

I'm really loving this wavy quilting.. and I think it was the perfect choice of these.

Just a Couple Stars... Complete!

My blocks for the Moda One Star Project are done!

I own very little beige.. and I learned I have no muted blue and/or red prints so solid blue would have to do!

Just One Star... In Progress

My project for Saturday is to finish up a couple of star blocks for the Moda Just One Star Project.  I just recently found out about it over at Carolina's blog.  I will be bringing these in for our next LVMQG meeting to be mailed off!

Quilted Pillows

I have a couple ikea pillows covers on my couch that just about everyone I know owns:

Ikea Hedda Cushion Cover 20"

I didn't realize how popular they are until I started seeing them in TV shows and in my friends photos. I still like them a lot... it's just been a couple of years now and I wanted something new and -more importantly- something I made.

I've been eyeing the mod mosaic style for a while now (Tutorial at Oh, Fransson!) and wanted create something with lots of my favorite fabrics all in one spot.  Then as I went to start it.. I got sidetracked (as usual) and remembered I wanted to try some HST.

I randomly started chopping up squares with my 4 1/2" ruler and 3 shades of gray Kona and started sewing them into HST.  As soon as i had enough.. I played around with the layout until I was happy:

I was aiming for a 21" block for my 20" pillow insert. I came up a bit short so I added a gray border.

It was a very happy accident.

Seams all pressed open:

After I spent all night on that... I spent the next day (finally) on my mod mosaic.   I just grabbed stuff at random and starting putting them together.  Here's some pics as I went:

I added some Warm and White batting and muslin on the back and quilted them with meandering free-motion.  I've been practicing getting my curves more rounded and less jerky.  I used Kona Coal on the back of both with white threading.. so it was a little risky but I gave it a shot!

I was really happy with how my quilting came out!  I trimmed them both to 20.5" and added an invisible zipper to the bottom.

I love them!

One just disappeared out of this city on a certain carry-on bag...

so I've added another pillow to my future to-do list.  :)

New Wave Quilt

I looked at my list of favorite quilts and my future to-do lists and I realized that most of them are from Elizabeth Hartman.  I even own her book which I flip through all the time.  I totally fell in love with the New Wave Quilt the first second I saw it.  And as soon as I got the Andrea Victoria fabric back in July... I knew that was the projected I wanted to use it for.

My plan was to finish this before the weather got warm... sadly it just went into the 70s when I took this picture.. I might have been to late... but I don't care - I love it so much!

The back is not as tilted as it looks in this photo.  All of the solids used are Kona.  White, Azure, and the back is Caribbean (my favorite!).  The fabric is Riley Blake - My Minds Eye - Andrea Victoria and I used Warm and White for the batting.

I used the Darlene Zimmerman's "Fat Cats" ruler as suggested on Oh, Fransson!'s blog and added a few columns and rows to make this bigger.  Final size is about 76" x 68".

I pressed all of my seams open.  I love how flat they lay.

(I. love. turquoise.)

I did a meandering free motion quilting all over this.  I feel like the quilting part took forever - I had to take so many breaks because this thing was super heavy to push through my machine!

Voilà!

Minky Blankets

I love Minky blankets. They're super soft and super quick.  That is... if you like sewing with Minky.  Here's a nice tutorial at iCraft. There are no strict measurements to this blanket, just square up, sew, turn, and topstitch.  This blue one is made from Amy Butler's Pressed Flowers in Turquoise and the back is Tiffany Minky from fabric.com.  It's 30"x36" finished.

I pre-washed the quilting cotton but I did not pre-wash the Minky as it does not shrink.  I cut the cotton down to 30"x36" and left the Minky a little larger and spread both out with the right sides facing.  The extra Minky around the edges will help in case there is shifting.

Then I pinned and pinned and pinned some more!

I used approx 3/8" seam all around the perimeter and left about 8" inches open to allow turning.  I used my walking foot and sewed with the Minky on the bottom.  Then I trimmed the edges down to size:

I turned it right side out and lightly (carefully) ironed the flower fabric around the opening to make the seam even and pinned it down.  I started sewing at that opening and topstiched around the edges using approx 1/4" seam.

And you're done!

What I learned making my first minky blanket:

Sure it looks cute folded up.... but I took the 'no measurements woooo!' very seriously.  There's nothing square about this blanket.  It's like 44"x43"x36"x35"... ish.  I took my scissors and just chopped away while looking at the TV.   I didn't even notice it until after I was done and I attempted to fold it.

Therefore, I learned: Always use a ruler, duh. :)  (and a rotary cutter helps too!)

Next up.  This pink minky-esque fabric was purchased at JoAnns called 'Soft N Comfy'.  It honestly feels nice at the store.. I really thought there was no difference.  As soon as I got the blue Tiffany Minky above I compared the two and holy crap was the Tiffany one softer.  I have it in a purple color too it has the same feel.  I still occasionally walk past the stuff at JoAnns and think 'No, this stuff is completely fine what was I thinking!' and then go home and compare the two again to remind myself.

Therefore, I learned:  Only Minky for me from now on!!

Fabric: Sugar Snap's Lace in Cocoa

What eight hours of baking looks like...

My friend Nacole and I thought it would be 'fun' to send out valentine's cookies.  I made 4 batches of dough (using my only go-to recipe for sugar cookies - The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies) the night before hoping I made enough.

This is 2 batches of dough:

Hours and hours of baking later we had these.  But then we still had 2 entire bags of powdered sugar to go to frost all of them.  There's approximately 260 cookies here.

Our spirits gave up the last couple hours.  There's nothing 'perfect' about these cookies other than they taste freaking amazing.

They dripped all over the place.  I still suck at frosting.

I think Nacole tried every design she could think of:

But everyone loved them! :)

The recipe I use for frosting is here: Sugar Cookie Icing

Del Hi Quilt

My friend is due at the end of this month to have a baby, and I was attempting to beat that due date and get this to her early.  She got the package today in the mail so I'm good to post the photos I've been hiding now!

This is a modified Colorbrick Quilt.  As I flipped through the in-process photos on Flickr for that quilt-a-long, I loved the way it looked pieced with just the vertical sashing between the blocks.  I added a few rows for length too. It is supposed to be a baby quilt... but I wanted it big enough so it didn't have to be. Since it measures approx 60x50 there is really nothing 'baby quilt' about this.

I had fabric photo exchanges with her so she could pick out the fabrics she liked.  This Del Hi line from Valori Wells has a lot of large prints, so I needed a quilt design that wouldn't take away from them.  These blocks are cut at 10" x5.5" and worked out perfect.

The back is the remaining blocks and a place where I actually got to show off the butterflies without them being chopped in half.  I just randomly pieced as needed and as fabric supply allowed.

The quilting I debated forever until I saw freshly pieced's quilt and finally decided on wavy lines.   This is the wavy stitch on my machine at max width/length.

Here's a couple in process photos while I was rearranging the blocks.  (btw - That is the The Practical Guide to Patchwork on my coffee table)

I love the way the sashing instantly brightens it up.